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About The Jefferson Bible

We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus. There will be remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.—Thomas Jefferson

Featuring an introduction by Forrest Church, this reissue of The Jefferson Bible offers extraordinary insight into the logic of Thomas Jefferson and the Gospel of Jesus. Working in the White House in 1804, Jefferson set out to edit the Gospels in order to uncover the essence of true religion in the simple story of the life of Jesus. Jefferson was convinced that the authentic message of Jesus could be found only by extracting from the Gospels Jesus’s message of absolute love and service, rather than the miracle of the Annunciation, Virgin Birth, or even the Resurrection. Completed in 1819, this little book is the remarkable result of Jefferson’s efforts.

Praise

Religion in America [gained] something unique from Jefferson. . . . His Jesus was a figure fitted for the Enlightenment, rational but not divine.—Gustav Niebuhr, New York Times

“The Founding Father’s treatment of the Bible was radical. . . . Today, historians such as Yale University’s Jaroslav Pelikan are struck by the project’s ‘sheer audacity’ . . . Jefferson’s Bible is a curious sidelight on an ever-intriguing figure, whose image has become more controversial in recent years.”—Richard N. Ostling, Associated Press

“Gives us a preaching Jesus of distinctly human dimensions, without miracles or resurrection. [A] fascinating document, telling us a great deal about a great eighteenth-century mind and its world.” —Charles S. Adams, Religious Studies Review

“These excerpts from the four Gospels are among the most interesting and compelling in all of the Scripture. They emphasize Jesus’ ethical lessons of love, reverence, forbearance, reproachment, repentance, and forgiveness.” —Garrett Ward Sheldon, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography